Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump's nominee as the CIA Director and facing criticism for being involved in detention and interrogation techniques, will promise not to restart any such controversial programme, according to the excerpts of her prepared remarks which she will tell before a Senate panel.
The 62-year-old veteran Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official will today appear before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for her confirmation hearing.
She has been facing criticism from lawmakers and human rights activists for being involved in the 2002-2005 enhanced interrogation programme post 9/11 at a secret CIA prison in Thailand where detainees were tortured by waterboarding.
"I understand that many people around the country want to know about what are my views on CIA's former detention and interrogation programme. I have views on this issue, and I want to be clear," according to the excerpts.
"Having served in that tumultuous time, I can offer you my personal commitment, clearly and without reservation, that under my leadership CIA will not restart such a detention and interrogation programme," she will say, according to the prepared testimony.
Trump, on the eve of her confirmation hearing, also praised her for being tough on terror.
"Gina Haspel, my highly respected nominee to lead the CIA, is being praised for the fact that she has been, and always will be, TOUGH ON TERROR!
"This is a woman who has been a leader wherever she has gone. The CIA wants her to lead them into America's bright and glorious future!" he said.
If confirmed, she would be the first female director of the US' spy agency.
"By any standard, my life at the Agency and it has been my life has exceeded all of my expectations, from that January day when I took my oath to today.
"There were few senior women leading at CIA in those days, and we are stronger now because that picture is changing," she would say.
"I did my part quietly and through hard work to break down those barriers. And I was proud to be the first woman to serve as the number-two in the Clandestine Service.
"It is not my way to trumpet the fact that I am a woman up for the top job, but I would be remiss in not remarking on it not least because of the outpouring of support from young women at CIA who consider it a good sign for their own prospects," Haspel would say.
During her confirmation hearing, Haspel will also tell lawmakers that her strategy starts with strengthening CIA's our core business: collecting intelligence to help policymakers protect the country and advance American interests around the globe.
"It includes raising our investment against the most difficult intelligence gaps, putting more officers in the foreign field where our adversaries are, and emphasising foreign language excellence.
"And, finally, it involves investing in our partnerships both within the US Government and around the globe," she said in the excerpts of her prepared remarks.
Haspel joined the CIA in 1985 as an operations officer in the Clandestine Service.
"From my first days in training, I had a knack for the nuts and bolts of my profession. I excelled in finding and acquiring secret information that I obtained in brush passes, dead drops, or in meetings in dusty back allies of third world capitals," she said.
"I recall my first foreign agent meeting was on a dark, moonless night with an agent I'd never met before. When I picked him up, he passed me the intelligence, and I passed him extra money for the men he led. It was the beginning of an adventure I had only dreamed of," Haspel would tell the lawmakers during her conformation hearing.
Meanwhile, 72 former CIA officers endorsed Haspel for CIA Director.
Haspel, who is currently the Acting Director of the CIA, has been endorsed by a host of former national security senior officials drawn from the ranks of the Intelligence Community, the Department of Defense, and the State Department.
"While Gina has spent most of her career on the operations side of the intelligence business, the officials who strongly support her nomination come from all disciplines, to include analysis, administration, and technology.
"Hers is a corporate, whole-of-Agency, whole-of-government approach designed to work productively within the national security community to keep our nation safe," the officials said in a joint statement.
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